NOVPUB"I told you this human is dumb!" a loud voice erupted from the tiger, booming with unfiltered contempt.
Then, from the very same mouth, a second voice spoke—calm, collected, and almost scholarly, "Calm down. You don't know him as much as I do. He's dangerous."
"Dangerous?" the loud one scoffed. "Look at him! He doesn't even realize the kind of peril he's in."
The calm voice replied, dry as sand, "Peril? I'm surprised you even know that word."
Ace watched in silence as the tiger kept bickering with itself—loud insults, dry rebuttals, sarcastic barbs flying back and forth.
It was obvious.
Split personality.
Or... Ace narrowed his eyes. It could be a clever ruse—something Amon set up to feign instability in case things got out of control.
Eventually, the tiger seemed to find balance.
It exhaled deeply, fur smoothing, and both voices spoke together, perfectly in sync:
"Human."
Then: "Ace."
"I'll talk," said the harsher voice.
"No. Let me," the calm one insisted.
The beast clicked its tongue in irritation.
Then, before Ace's eyes, its left eye turned white—then black—and finally flickered green, glowing faintly.
"Well then, Ace," came the voice—now smooth, composed, and tinged with quiet malice. "You hide yourself well, I'll give you that... but you act like an amateur. Why don't you show us your Qiong Qi?"
Ace didn't respond.
The tiger's green eye narrowed. "Hmm... the silent type, are we? Playing stubborn?"
The creature gave a smirk. "Then perhaps you'd prefer news of your disciples? Would that loosen your tongue?"
But Ace simply shook his head as he said, "No. "
That made the tiger pause. Even Amon seemed surprised.
Then the louder voice burst out laughing, "See?! I told you! You and your soft little human instincts are never right!"
Before Ace could blink, the tiger lunged.
It moved like a bolt of lightning, teeth bared, claws outstretched.
Ace tried to dodge it but the claws grazed him, albeit barely, pain flared across his chest as
the claw mark left a carving a red-hot line through his robes.
He landed hard, gritting his teeth.
The tiger was fast.
Way too fast for his eyes to actually follow.
The tiger next roared and the air rippled.
A wave of Soul Energy exploded from its body, twisting the ground and shattering the trees behind it like brittle glass.
The force of it was suffocating—crushing—a weight that pressed down on reality itself.
Legend-rank.
Ace's pupils shrank. The very air around him warped, colors bending, as if the world couldn't hold shape under the pressure.
Boom!
The ground where he had just stood erupted.
He flipped backward, landing lightly on a crumbling boulder but it shattered under another pulse of soul force.
He darted right. A burst of green Soul Energy smashed into the earth beside him, vaporizing the rock into dust.
Left!
A tendril of soul power whipped out, Ace rolled under it, coat grazing the scorched ground.
Another wave came. He launched into the air, spinning mid-leap, narrowly avoiding a lance of spiritual pressure that split the sky.
He moved like water. Evading like his life depended on it,
and it sure did.
His chest burned from the earlier wound, blood soaking through his robes, but his eyes remained cold and calculating..
He twisted mid-run and vaulted into a collapsing slope, ricocheting off two broken tree trunks, using the debris to slingshot behind the beast—just outside its line of sight.
The tiger turned, but luckily it was not fast enough.
Ace's hand snapped forward to slam a talisman into the ground.
A burst of sealing light erupted, momentarily disrupting the field of soul energy.
The tiger growled, lunging through it but Ace was already gone, using the breath of space to leap high above, calculating the arc, his body like an arrow mid-flight.
He landed with a slide beside a broken ridge, blood trailing from his lips.
The ridge cracked beneath his boots as Ace pivoted towards the incoming storm of soul energy.
The tiger didn't expect it.
Soul pressure slammed forward, snapping trees in its path. Ace ducked low, letting it skim overhead.
His hand brushed against the torn fabric of his robes, fingers dipping into his sleeve to slip a thin, rune-etched disc into the soil.
He didn't stop running and each stride was deliberate, drawing a spiral around the tiger.
Every few steps—click—another disc buried beneath ash and dirt.
The tiger barreled after him, a blur of muscle and fury, green aura trailing like fire.
Another Soul Blast. Ace vaulted sideways, twisting in the air but it wasn't enough.
The edge of the blast hit his shoulder, it wasn't much but it was just enough to tear flesh and spill blood.
He landed hard, rolling with the momentum, gasping—but never losing grip of the last disc in his hand.
"Running in circles, human?" the tiger mocked with both voices layered—one amused, the other growling. "Your legs will give out before my soul power does."
Ace didn't answer but he also stopped running.
Standing right where he started he pressed the final disc into the ground with a muted hum.
With that, the spiral was complete.
The tiger lunged, seeing what it thought was an exhausted, wounded target—blood trailing down his arm, chest heaving, one eye squinted in pain.
Ace didn't move, he even turned to give a smirk as he watched the tiger crossed an invisible line.
Then he flicked his hand.
The discs lit.
A pulse burst from beneath the soil, a Formation, crude but effective, enough to blind the beast.
A soul-light inversion field. Temporarily scrambling sensory input for any being using Soul Sense.
The tiger roared mid-pounce, slamming into the field—and for a breathless second, its eyes flickered white, then black, then blind green static.
Ace didn't waste the moment.
He dropped to one knee, blood smearing across the trigger rune as he pressed it and BOOM!
a blast of condensed spirit powder ignited in the tiger's face, enhanced by the field's dissonance.
The blast howled across the ridge, blowing up dust and soul-fog in thick curtains.
Shards of light flickered where the formation tried to hold, but it was already cracking, barely enough to maybe stall a legend-ranked beast.
